French TV Shows To Watch On Netflix Right Now

I’m fascinated by all things Parisian.

French food, French fashion – even French beauty! You name it, I’ve tried to incorporate it into my life.

Recently, I’ve decided to branch out with the type of television I consume on Netflix, and that lead me down the rabbit hole of French TV. I know, I can imagine you rolling your eyes right now. Nobody likes to read captions, right? Surely a book would be less work…

But wait, before you click away, just know this: it’s kind of the best thing to happen to my evenings.

French TV is so… grungy. At least the shows I’m watching are. We all know I *love* anything true crime, so the shows I’m leaning towards are definitely more from that genre as opposed to rom-com or action/adventure shows, but the French true crime TV scene is kinda incredible.

The other thing I love about watching French TV, or any foreign TV for that matter, is the fact that you have to be 100% focused the entire time. There’s no ‘I’m just checking my instagram’ or ‘let me just reply to this message’. Both Harry and I had to put our phones down for 45-50 minutes at a time and it was so refreshing. It reminded me of why I love watching TV so much. Being completely engrossed in a show is one of my favourite little pleasures in life.

I first started with The Chalet, which Harry and I binge-watched in a matter of days. I thought convincing my anti-reading/true-crime-hating boyfriend to watch a French true crime show with me would be really hard, but within minutes his eyes would not leave the screen. It’s a mysterious one-season show about a group of friends that meet at a remote chalet in the French Alps for a summer holiday. Things start going wrong when we learn that the chalet has a dark, dark history, and everyone staying there in the present day has some sort of secret or trauma they’re trying to hide. A must watch, for sure. The characters are incredibly built and the whole small village vibe just works so well with the creepy af storyline.

The Forest is another creepy French TV show that I thoroughly enjoyed watching. A teenage girl goes missing in the Forest of Ardennes in France, where two women disappeared only years earlier. A teacher from the area, who received a call from the missing teen before her disappearance, joins forces with the police to help find the girl. Things quickly unravel and we soon find out that the teacher herself had a bizarre experience in the forest when she was a girl… it’s basically a crazy, twisted story with lots of shocking turns.

A psychopathic murderer is on the loose, whose murders are very similar to those committed over twenty years ago by an infamous serial killer known as The Mantis. Seeing that the police have no new leads, The Mantis offers her assistance to law enforcement in order to help catch the killer, but only if she can work with one particular detective: her estranged son. Watch La Mante if you’re into high-tension crime shows.

The Frozen Deadis one gruesome af crime show, but if you can get past that aspect, it’s an interesting storyline with beautiful camera work. Basically, a small town high in the French Pyrenees holds a dark secret, and the police have brought in the best detective in the business to unravel it. This is the kind of show to watch on a Friday night with all of the lights dimmed low and a good bottle of French red, you know? The constant blanket of snow on the mountains adds such a creepy vibe to this show which is probably why I love it so much.